Tech Shout!

A few days ago, we had reported that National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) were preparing the Endeavour space shuttle. Now the latest is that teacher-turned-astronaut Barbara Morgan and her crew mates arrived in Florida yesterday for the dress rehearsal in preparation for next month’s launch.

But as it has become a tradition for the NASA flight launches, bad weather forced the seven astronauts to turn up in a jet usually used for simulating shuttle landings rather than the smaller training jets regularly employed to fly the crew from Houston to Kennedy Space Center. However, Endeavour’s commander Scott Kelly said, “Hopefully in three weeks, we’ll have better weather to fly down here.”

Endeavour crew will be staying in Florida for three days. During this course they will be briefed on safety equipment, drive a tank used during an escape from the launch pad and make shuttle landing simulation runs. The rehearsals will end with a practice launch countdown on Thursday, when the astronauts don their orange spacesuits and climb into the shuttle.

Barbara Morgan was smiling when they landed and thanked the reporters for coming to see them. Morgan was Christa McAuliffe’s backup for the Challenger space mission in 1986. It was blown apart shortly after liftoff killing McAuliffe and six astronauts. Barbara Morgan has been waiting for this opportunity for the last twenty years.

The Endeavour space shuttle is scheduled to be launched on August 7, 2007. The astronauts will be delivering a new truss section to the international space station as well as fix a gyroscope that controls the outpost’s orientation. The Endeavour astronauts might be involved in as many as four spacewalks.